V 2009

The first episode of the remake of the classic scifi serie V aired last night and here are my first impressions.
(Beware of some possible spoilers below, especially if you haven’t seen the original.)

I am a big fan of the 1983 classic scifi serie V so my first thought when i saw the announcement for the remake was “oh no, are they really gonna slaughter this fantastic show with a remake”. Needless to say, it was with great skepticism i started to watch the pilot of V 2009.

The storyline is true to the original mini series and i must admit i found myself interested almost from the beginning. The buildup before the arrival of the motherships was quite good and i liked the fact that they choose not to show the whole ships (you could see parts of the ships in reflections in buildings etc.) in the beginning, it added nicely to the suspense.
One of the best things in the original series was the suspense and the feeling that something was not right from the beginning and i think that they managed to capture that in the remake as well (so far), creds in this regard goes to Morena Baccarin (Stargate, Firefly…) as the visitors supreme commander Anna.

You’ll see some other familiar actors/actresses among the cast – Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost), Joel Gretsch (The 4400), Scott Wolf (Everwood, The nine) and Alan Tudyk (Firefly, Dollhouse) to name a few. The acting was ok overall and i do hope they will let the different characters develop during the series.

This brings me to what i hope this series will be. First i really hope they resist the urge to make this into an actionpacked show with nothing more than over the top effects because there is much more interesting topics to exploit – the political game, cultural clashes, a society divided etc. This was what made for example the remake of Battlestar Galactica so fracking good

As with all tv series one have to watch a couple of episodes to actually get a feel for it and i will continue to watch V 2009, hoping for something great.

On a sidenote, i just love the geeky references in the original show like for instance in the scene when the alien workers lands outside the NY plant and the band plays the theme from Star Wars